Freakons at the Hideout! 2nd Show

September 12, 2017 @ 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

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Opening the evening will be a short film, presented by its director Tom Hansell, from the After Coal project (http://aftercoal.com/), profiling a historic exchange between the coalfields of Kentucky and Wales.

Mekons + Freakwater = Freakons

Mekons (beloved, mythical British rabble-rousing beast) and Freakwater (also beloved, yet often derided as godmothers of Alt-Country) have allied their sundry song & dance talents for the forces of good.

Freakwater and Mekons are bound to each other by the rich seam of Anthracite coal running the width of the Atlantic Ocean from Wales to the Appalachian Mountains. The music and culture of mineral resource extraction, ecological disaster, and worker exploitation are their shared heritage. In the fall of 2017, the Freakons will be playing shows and making a record of traditional and original songs addressing these timely and timeless subjects.

Was it love at first sight? Was it a slow, subterranean, creeping thing? When the swirling face in the funhouse mirror winks back at you and commands, “Approach,” how will you answer? When it asks, “Do we perhaps share a rich and confounding coal-mining heritage? Might you in fact be descended from a proud race of whiskey-drinking poets? Approach. It’s dark in here. You look familiar… Is our carbon-based bastard child meant to be?” The answer is yes. The Freakons must be born.

All profits from the upcoming Freakons’ record will benefit Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, a grassroots organization opposing mountaintop removal mining and promoting economic justice, voting rights, and Kentucky’s transition to new energy sources.